WAS HE KILLED?

Re­port re­veals bite marks and bruises on baby Makavelii

CAIRNS mum Lina Da­ley is fac­ing a po­lice probe into homi­cide and child ne­glect over the un­solved death of her baby in Cairns.

The Cairns Post can to­day ex­clu­sively re­veal tragic new de­tails sur­round­ing the sus­pi­cious death of her 13-month-old boy three months ago.

Baby Makavelii had mul­ti­ple bruises and bite marks over his body, a graze to the left tem­ple of his head, and a pos­si­ble burn mark with 3mm of skin miss­ing on his fore- head. He was re­port­edly pulled from a bath tub af­ter he stopped breath­ing but had swal­lowed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of wa­ter prior to his death.

It comes as the baby’s body was fi­nally re­leased back to his fam­ily by the State Coro­ner yesterday to al­low them to pre­pare fu­neral ar­range­ments.

Po­lice de­tec­tive se­nior-sergeant Mick Gooiker said of­fi­cers were yet to file any charges over the baby’s death at a White Rock house on Septem­ber 24.

“We treat any child death very se­ri­ously,” the Cairns Child Pro­tec­tion and In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor said.

“We are still wait­ing for some fur­ther foren­sic and med­i­cal tests.

“But we will do ev­ery­thing we can to iden­tify the cause of death to solve the case and put in a re­port to the Coro­ner.”

Ms Da­ley, 20, who has a his­tory of il­licit drug abuse, has been sui­ci­dal and on drug binges since her baby’s death.

Posts to one of her so­cial me­dia sites state: “I’m the rea­son his (sic) gone.”

“Noth­ing but a child killa I And. Am*”

Child Safety doc­u­ments ex­clu­sively ob­tained by the Cairns Post show Ms Da­ley had been un­able to ex­plain the events lead­ing up to Makavelii’s death.

“Makavelii was in Ms Da­ley’s care im­me­di­ately prior to his death,” they said.

“There are con­cerns that Ms Da­ley may not have ad­e­quately su­per­vised Makavelii and that he may have been left in the care of per­sons who were un­safe. There are con­cerns that Ms Da­ley may have been un­der the in­flu­ence of sub­stances whilst car­ing for Makavelii.’’

Drug tests show the young mum has tested pos­i­tive for ice, speed, ec­stasy, MDA and cannabis.

The tests also iden­ti­fied that Ms Da­ley’s drug use has sig­nif­i­cantly in­ten­si­fied in the past three months.

“It is ac­knowl­edged that Ms Da­ley’s grief and loss cre­ates a very chal­leng­ing time for her­self and all in­volved,’’ a re­port says.

“How­ever the drug use has been oc­cur­ring prior to Makavelii’s death – and has only am­pli­fied.’’

GRIEF: Lina Da­ley with po­lice at the White Rock home and (left) with son Makavelii.